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Adventures in …… Pergamano!

I think in hindsight that this week’s offering should have been entitled, ‘The Dick & Liddy Interlude’ or maybe, ‘When Chalk met Cheese’.

To be fair, this week’s highlighted craft and myself make for a couple of unlikely bedfellows; On the one hand you have the rather delicate, feminine and stunningly beautiful embellishment and decoration of parchment vellum, which is basically what pergamano is ……. and then you have me! And whilst countless people have chosen some rather well placed adjectives to describe my very good self over the years, I can honestly say, with a fair deal of certainty, that very few would have applied words such as delicate and certainly NEVER feminine! Stunningly beautiful… maybe…. but only ‘coz they’ve wanted a ride in the bus!

Parchment Craft - Pretty much everything I'm not!

So, after pulling my head out of the engine bay and scrubbing my hands with a nail brush and the best part of a tub of Swarfega for half an hour, I resolved to sit down and get to grips with acting ladylike and being sedate…. And I found it was a very hard thing to do!

Pergamano is all about using techniques such as embossing, perforating, stippling, cutting and colouring and it comes with it’s own range of tools needed for the task.

The tools for the job - lethal in the wrong hands!

I used just three; the embossing tool, an ‘I’ needle and a Dorso crayon. All work is done in reverse and once you’ve secured your piece of vellum in place with a few paperclips it’s a matter of ‘tracing’ out the chosen design using the various tools and techniques. It all works by applying pressure which stretches the semi-transparent paper until it becomes opaque and white, which, when turned over, has an embossed effect. Colour can also be added by using special crayons which you smudge and blend with your fingertips.

In fairness, I found it a bit fiddly and probably would have benefited from wearing my glasses as it was quite close work. But I persevered and came up with a vellum overlay for a Valentine’s card.

The fruits of my labour - Valentine's Card by Big Blue Bully Bus

I even managed to add a blush of blue to the heart – which ensued in a further bout of handwashing before I grabbed the camera to record my efforts!

Now that I’ve had a go I must say that I’m glad I’ve tried parchment craft; It is a bit of a faff though and I think if I decide to revisit it at a later date I’ll make sure that I dig out my glasses AND sit in a well lit place to do it – But for the moment it’s another craft I can strike off of my 52 week long list!

Next week sees the changeover to the second theme of the year – Jewellery; And I’m looking forward to the challenges that that will present already 🙂 I’m going to start the proceedings with some bead making so if you want to join in you’ll need to collect some felt scraps, a beading needle, thread, seed beads, a skewer and a pair of scissors.